Spite Tracking: When Frustration Becomes a Data Trail

Not all health tracking is about optimization. Some of it is born from necessity. Some of it, from defiance.

A growing number of people are engaging in what we call spite tracking: the act of collecting health data not for self-improvement, but as a defense mechanism. It's tracking out of frustration, disbelief, or desperation when traditional systems fail to acknowledge what someone knows to be true about their body.

Why Spite Tracking Happens

Spite tracking surfaces when people feel unheard, unseen, or misdiagnosed. It shows up in contexts like:

• Chronic illness patients dismissed as "just stressed"
• Neurodivergent individuals navigating systems designed for neurotypical norms
• Individuals in pain with normal labs and no clear diagnosis
• Parents trying to advocate for their children's misunderstood symptoms

And yes, it shows up powerfully in women’s health:

• Women and minority patients are up to 30% more likely to be misdiagnosed than white men.
• Black women in the U.S. are nearly three times more likely to die from childbirth-related causes than white women.
• Menopause, though it affects all women, is still absent from 99% of biological aging studies.

Spite tracking becomes a strategy - a way to build a personal body of evidence when the formal systems offer none.

Tools for Spite Tracking

People are turning to a mix of tools to document their experiences:

• Wearables like Oura Ring, Apple Watch, and Fitbit that log sleep, heart rate, or activity
• Symptom trackers such as Clue, Bearable, and CareClinic that help monitor and tag physical and emotional patterns
• Digital or paper journals, from Notion templates to old-school notebooks, for narrative and contextual tracking
• Custom trackers in apps like Fulcra’s Annotations, Talli, or even inside spreadsheets to capture context, life events, and subtle changes alongside health data

Each of these tools becomes a way to record, and later, validate what’s happening in the body when no one else is keeping track.

This Isn’t Just a Trend. It’s a Response.

Spite tracking isn't about being petty, it's about being heard. It's about reclaiming agency in systems that often gaslight or ignore. It's a signal of where medicine has fallen short and where people are stepping up to fill the gaps themselves.

This is a movement born not of technology, but of necessity. Of people demanding that their experiences matter. That their symptoms deserve attention. That their patterns are worth recognizing.

Spite tracking isn't about optimization. It's about validation.

It's a refusal to be dismissed. It's what happens when people take control of their narrative, and their data, in a system that still has blind spots.

If you’ve ever tracked a symptom because no one else took it seriously, you're not alone. And you’re not wrong to do it.